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Humboldt Research Award to Prof. Neil Boister

Prof. Neil Boister of the University of Waikato’s Law Faculty was
awarded a prestigious Humboldt Research Award in February 2014. The Humboldt Foundation grants up to only 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually. Prof Boister
will take up his Award in December 2014 working with Prof Dr Florian
Jessberger in the Faulty of Law at the University of Hamburg.

His proposed research project will focus on the role that The European
Union has played in initiating the development of transnational
criminal law, the system of international treaties and domestic laws
designed to suppress transnational crime. A considerable amount of
research has been done into the role played in the past by the United
States in the development of transnational criminal law, in
identifying threats and developing substantive and procedural criminal
laws to suppress those threats, and then setting about globalising
those laws through a treaty basis. There has, however, been little
work done on the role played by the European Union and its agencies
such as the European Police Office (Europol) and the European
Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) in the development of transnational criminal
law. While the EU is well known as a laboratory for developing
responses to crime internally, the EU has been globally active in a
range of areas including anti-money laundering and anti-tobacco
smuggling legislation. It has been pushing the models it has developed
globally and inevitably states like New Zealand are faced with the
decision of whether to adapt their law to in this case EU
model. Broadly speaking this research project will thus examine how
and why the EU has developed into a ‘transnational norm entrepreneur’
within transnational criminal law, and what this means for
transnational criminal law.